The US interstate highway system of rules was once a marvel of modernistic engineering science , allowing the movement of goods and mind that ushered in an era of unprecedented successfulness . But when those highways reached the cities they connected , they plowed through the lowest - income areas , physically dividing locality and financially withering community .
Anew initiativeannounced by US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx today is focused on repairing the inequality in American cities that those main road task charge years ago .
“ Although our highway have served as a powerful economic locomotive , we now have the clarity of many decades of hindsight , ” he say on a call today . “ alas instead of connecting us to each other , main road deviser branch us . ”
It ’s no secret that main road shoved a orotund helping of urban minorities out of their abode . Examining data on the types ofproperties demolished to make way for highwaysshowed some trends , Foxx said , namely “ square displacement of the poor and people of color . ” If you add urban renewal projects — misguided “ slum area removal ” program that leveled blue - income housing in many cities during the 1960s and ‘ 70s — about two - thirds of the urban translation happening over the last half of the twentieth C place the poorest Americans .
Some cities are already working to fix decades of bad transferral decisions . Foxx gave examples like Los Angeles’sCrenshaw Line , a raw light rail line of work that broke solid ground last month . By connecting the city ’s Expo Line to LAX , it will travel through anunderserved area of South Los Angeles — a place that has already been eviscerated by the grammatical construction of several dissimilar freeways .
Foxx also preach forhighway removalsandfreeway caps — an increasingly democratic way for cities to improve quality of life and reclaim worthful material estate for housing and public space . He specifically mentioned Rochester , New York ’s plan to tear down a highway and Columbus , Ohio’sCap at Union Stationthat spans a freeway to reunify two neighborhoods .
The kettle of fish does n’t always mean monolithic infrastructural overhauls — sometimes it ’s as simple as better tech . Modeling , like theAlphabet - back data platform Flow , might help a metropolis understand how street use will change with the acceptation of self-directed vehicles . This is an idea that ’s central to USDOT ’s transportation funding bonanzaSmart City Challenge , which is giving $ 40 million to one of seven metropolis to make the transportation system of rules of the future .
Perhaps the most encouraging thought is that it ’s not too tardy for cities to change . Remember the release of last year’s$305 billion FAST Actwhich apportion transferral dollars to projects all over the body politic , butway too much of that moneyfor projects like widening highways ? “ These determination - makers have a lot of flexibility , ” read Foxx when asked about FAST , and inspire cities to revisit their plans , particularly with projects that would make live divisions worse .
In rural areas or other places underserved by transit , Americans will still want to swear on vehicles for decade , and Foxx acknowledged that repairing roads for equipment driver and cargo is a critical part of making transportation work for everyone . But there ’s no rationality to have main road pummeling through the centers of cities . It ’s clip to unwrap some of the bad urban planning misunderstanding that the US ever made .
[ USDOT ]
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